


this wouldn't happen if you had a car

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Background Ronan/Kavinsky, Established Relationship, M/M, Major Injuries to a Bicycle, Malicious Driving, Minor Injuries to a Person, POV Second Person, Terrible Road Safety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5998237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tried to run you over. The thought rattles around your brain as you grasp woozily for <i>why</i> and can’t come up with a better explanation than <i>Kavinsky</i>. Or, possibly, Ronan. You don’t know what they do to each other, just that you would like very much to opt out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this wouldn't happen if you had a car

**Author's Note:**

> This must be set during Dream Thieves since it's before the Hondayota (and also because K's in it :V) At least my ship bingo card is starting to fill out. 
> 
> Huge, huge thanks to [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) who helped me develop this idea and was very patient in helping me working the kinks out.

Henrietta in summer is the worst time not to own a car. In winter, cycling is so treacherously difficult that you allow Gansey to put his foot down and ferry you around in the stuffy-even-with-the-windows-open Camaro. In summer, the very fact that you _can_ bike means that you have to, even though the blistering heat scorches the back of your neck to a vicious, stinging red and makes your hands sweaty enough to slip on the handlebars. Whatever your destination, you arrive an overheated mess, proud only to have made it on your own steam and not for the burns wrapped like a prickling blanket over your shoulders.

It’s a fight Gansey saves for the hottest days when he thinks his odds are best. He’ll just look at you sideways and propose that he might be feeling like a drive in the direction of the mechanics’ shop, saying it offhand like it isn’t a plot against your pride. Usually, you refuse. Today he told you it was the highest recorded temperature for the last five years, and you failed to understand what that actually meant until after you’d turned him down and started cycling.

The heat in the air feels physical, like something you’re pushing back against with every movement. There’s a dense, aching stillness hanging over Henrietta, pressing down on you and making the tarmac beneath you feel like treacle sucking at your wheels. You imagine actually getting stuck in it, the blackness of the road turning into a tar pit to swallow you up in sticky, molten heat.

It’s less than a minute of cycling before your hair and shirt are both plastered to you, sticking grossly against your skin and making you hideously hyperaware of every drop of sweat that trails down your skin. The back of your neck is slowly charring, but the thought of returning to Gansey looking like you do is beyond mortifying, and you struggle on.

The mechanic lies a few miles outside of town, at the end of a road with not much else on it. A handful of cars pass as you keep carefully to the edge of the asphalt; the rush as they pass is almost a breeze, but you learn not to lean into it after the first time you’re hit by a hot spurt of exhaust. Some have their windows down, so you can hear snatches of songs; one is full of teenagers who see you suffering and laugh from their air-conditioned chariot. Probably Aglionby boys, you think, too hot to put any venom into it.

You’re about halfway when you hear another car thundering up behind you and stupidly, stupidly assume that it is being driven by a sane person. It’s not until it’s close that you can really tell it’s driving up _behind_ you and not beside, and when you glance back to check you find yourself staring into a pair of white-rimmed sunglasses.

You have never started a fight with Joseph Kavinsky, but it looks like he’s here for one anyway. He’s got a vicious slash of a grin for you, one hand on the wheel, and several thousand pounds of Mitsubishi Evo simmering aggressively. He’s only a few meters behind you, and whatever he’s doing feels deliberate in a personal way that you don’t recall inspiring. You don’t have time for his particular brand of bullshit right now, though, you’ve got work and all your emotions have been delegated out, there are none left for this. You’ve been seeing Ronan for less than a month; surely that must be too soon to start getting wrapped up in his shit.

Apparently Kavinsky disagrees. You’re biking as close to the edge of the road as you dare, up to where the asphalt edging gets uneven, falling away in clumps to the gravel and grasses clinging to the edge of the road. You’re trying to give him as much space as possible to get around you, as though _that’s_ the reason he’s driving so close. Kavinsky has two clear lanes to play with; instead he guides his car along directly behind you, until you can feel the road under your wheels vibrating in time to his engine. “Piss off,” you yell at him, more of a gasp than a command as the heat saps your strength and wears your voice ragged.

Kavinsky’s grin twists just a little, a flash of something far crueller than what you’ve seen at any of his games so far. The Evo roars a warning, and slams into your back tyre, sending you spinning out sideways off the road.

You spend a single second in the air, clinging tighter to the handlebars even as the seat falls away under you, trying to understand the sky soaring past in place of the road. You would brace for impact, but you don’t know what direction to brace in, and so you just curl in on yourself and close your eyes, sense of incoming pain overwhelmingly familiar. You crash to the ground hard, gravel catching you and gripping you savagely to hold you to the earth. You can hear Kavinsky’s laugh through the screech of his car carrying him away.

He tried to run you over. The thought rattles around your brain as you grasp woozily for _why_ and can’t come up with a better explanation than _Kavinsky_. Or, possibly, Ronan. You don’t know what they do to each other, just that you would like very much to opt out and don’t know how. The thought of Kavinsky considering you the way he considers Ronan makes your stomach turn. You do not want to hold his attention, you do not want him _thinking_ about you, or you’ll never be able to hear a car without flinching again.

You can’t say if Kavinsky was actually trying to _kill_ you, but the uncertainty makes it worse. He couldn’t have known how you’d fall. You could have landed wrong, snapped your neck. Your head could have hit the road and cracked open, and you picture yourself bleeding out by the empty county road, hoping for another car to pass.

For a moment you’re too gripped by nausea to move, but you tell yourself that you’re still alive, and for as long as you’re alive, you still need to work, and the worst of the feeling subsides. The edge of it remains, though, just another thing to lie at the back of your mind and make you sick at night.

Slowly, you uncoil, testing every limb for damage as you try to unfold yourself and stand. Your left hip is going to be purple, you can tell from the throbbing agony it pulses out, and your arms are covered in cuts and gashes, the chips of gravel responsible still clinging to your skin. Pain had almost become a stranger, but you remember it now as you grit your teeth and do your best to move on. The damage is nothing permanent, and if it’s not going to impact you in future, you don’t see why you should waste time acknowledging it now.

Your bike did not take the crash as well as you. The back wheel is twisted from the collision with the car, and the front took the brunt of the fall, first wheel now a wonky oval. The whole frame has bent into something that is mostly bike-shaped, but not quite bike-shaped enough, just to mock you with the impossibility of riding it.

You’re going to miss your shift if you have to walk, if you even can walk with the sun apparently set against you, personally, and your bike’s bent wheel promising to make dragging it a challenge. The fact that getting run over by Kavinsky is not your fault – and probably a near epidemic in Henrietta – doesn’t matter. A missed shift is missed money and your finances are so delicately balanced that you’ll need to recalculate how many slices of bread you can eat, and you are about to have a very large bike-shaped expense in your immediate future. You need another way to get to work.

Reluctantly, you reach for your phone. It’s an old enough model that it wasn’t really at risk of cracking in your fall, but you’re still pleased to see it unharmed. It’s Ronan’s castoff, and he told you to take it so Gansey would stop calling him, looking for you. He also threatened to put it in a blender if you refused, so you took it and resolved not to use it as a compromise.

Getting Ronan on the phone is always a scintillating game of chance, but you luck out and get him on the fifth ring and not the fifth call. “Hey,” you say, “I need a ride.” You say it like a statement, like it’s not a concession from you to be asking, like the fact you need someone with a car is independent from everything that led up to that need.

Blessed Ronan does not care. “So you’re stranded somewhere in rural Virginia?”

“If you call the road to the mechanic ‘rural’.”

“If you can see a cow, then it’s rural.” He hangs up, and you’re forced to assume that if he didn’t deny you outright then he’ll be on his way to get you. There are no trees to shelter under while you wait, so you just haul your bike back upright onto the road’s edge and hope that there won’t be any other cars to drive by and gawk. You’re a mess from the crash - dust sticks to your sweaty skin and renders you completely brown, save for the bright spots of your blood. No one has ever dressed up to do an oil change but you’re suddenly self-conscious of what a wreck Ronan will see when he arrives. You wipe your face on your shirt, uselessly moving dirt around, and then resolve not to care even as you continue to care very much.

You spend the rest of the time until he gets there trying to sight a cow.

The blare of Ronan’s music arrives before the BMW, aggressive bass heralding the sharp black car that glides up beside you. You get a glimpse of yourself reflected in the window, and you look like you’ve been rolling in a ditch because of course you have, and your cheeks burn that anyone’s going to see you like this. It’s necessary, you remind yourself, trying to fight off shame with the harsh reality of your financial situation. Shockingly, it doesn’t make you feel better.

You load your ruined bike into the boot and slide into the passenger seat, thinking that maybe if you act like you’re not feeling shitty then Ronan will play along and not notice you getting dirt on his seats. Sometimes he’s good like that, sometimes he goes out of his way to jab at your sore spots if it’s too obvious you’re trying to hide them. “It’s not rural,” you tell him, hoping to divert his attention away from your fine dust coating.

He eyes you for a moment before starting up the car, and the air con blasts you in the face, icy ecstasy that you can’t help but sag into. Compared to the outside temperature, it feels sub-zero, and you know it’ll be too cold for you in sixty seconds but for now it’s absolute bliss. “Your bike looks fucked,” he says conversationally. “Like it got hit by a car. Did the one percent come and run you down in a limousine, to make it more personal?”

You try not to wince. Of course he was going to say _something_ , and since he came out to collect you, you feel like you owe him a response. Not necessarily a truthful one. You don’t know what would happen if you told Ronan about Kavinsky, but it seems like something would escalate, and if you’re sure of anything, it’s that you don’t have the resources to handle escalation. Besides, you should be able to fight your own battles, and you should be able to choose to _not_ battle a vicious, sharp-edged veteran. “Just hit a stray rock. Bad balance threw me off.”

Ronan snorts, giving you a look that either says you’re stupid for thinking he’ll believe that, or you’re stupid for managing to hit an obstacle on an empty road. “You going to bribe me not to tell Gansey you’re reduced to walking now?”

It’s a completely appalling suggestion, and your offense carries in your voice. “Ronan, you wouldn’t.”

“He’d start sabotaging the Pig.” Ronan begins to speak in what would be Gansey’s voice, if Gansey’s voice was an octave higher and eight times fussier. “‘Oh, Adam, there’s a rattle in the trunk, I think I’ll have to drive you to the shop and get it checked out.’ Then you’ll find a polo shirt balled up and jammed into the engine.”

It’s too real. You hiss out a breath and ask him, “Do I actually need to bribe you to prevent this from happening?”

He replies to your very valid fear with a lazy grin. “Oh, yeah, I’ll take a bribe from _you_ , Parrish. Give me everything you’ve got, all eighteen cents.”

You smack him in the arm. He smacks you back, and it feels safe and familiar and you are so impossibly grateful for it all. You don’t regret calling him, and you almost want to weep with relief that there’s someone you can let yourself rely on. Of course, you don’t. You tell Ronan, “I can’t believe you’d take my entire college fund,” and feel something warm unfold in you when he sniggers.

If you can entertain Ronan Lynch, if he’ll drive out to barely-urban Virginia on your behalf and not blink at the grit still embedded in your skin, you feel like you could be worth something.

You get to work one minute late when you’re usually five minutes early, but you linger in the car for a moment, wondering if it would be embarrassing to have to thank Ronan for picking you up or if it’s just polite. You conclude that he doesn’t care, and won’t notice either way, and just say, “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah,” he says, “We’ll do something in the weekend, maybe.”

You don’t want to leave him and go into work, to have to focus on things other than the way he’s always not-quite looking at you, but you can’t think of anything else to say and the silence is getting awkwardly long. You’re two minutes late, now, two minutes you will meticulously tack onto the end of your shift. You say, “Bye,” too abruptly and hop out of the car, slam the door and pull your bike from the boot. You can sense Ronan’s eyes on you in the rear-view mirror, but you don’t meet them, just head in to the shop while listening over-attentively for the sound of the BMW pulling away.

It’ll be a long walk home, dragging your bike, but the air will be cooler and you tell yourself that it won’t be the worst thing. You’ve lost sight of what the worst thing is; you’ve had to push aside so many contenders, but you’re sure you’ll know when it inevitably befalls you.

 

Before you started your shift, you went to the bathroom and washed the worst of the dirt off you; by the end, you’re as filthy as when you arrived, grease and oil and engine fluids replacing dust and stinging whenever a stray drop finds one of your little cuts. Based on the thousand individual needling points on you, you think the gravel must have torn you open worse than you’d realised.  

The walk home ahead of you has come to feel a lot less bearable and much more daunting as all of your energy reserves were drained away into automotive repair. You wash up numbly and stagger out to collect your bike, wondering if it would be possible to sleep-walk your way home and not step out in front of a car.

There’s a BMW parked squarely in front of the shop’s door, full of its own importance as it shakes the ground with second-hand electronica and blocks all potential customers from the shop. You consider reprimanding Ronan for showing up unasked, for trying to _give_ you something that you did not ask for. And then you think about how long it will take you to get your bike home, and about wearing out the soles of your shoes, and about how maybe, if it’s Ronan offering to do something nice for you, you could consider accepting.

You load your bike into the trunk.

“Hey,” he greets you. “I know it’s really important to you that you martyr yourself every possible opportunity, but I figured you could just suck it up for once.”

Your head sinks back against the seat, and you are sure hard leather should not feel so much like foam mattress. “I’ll let it slide this time,” you murmur, stupid with the need to sleep, and Ronan seems to accept that, pulling away from the mechanic’s and turning down the road to Henrietta.

It doesn’t feel like Kavinsky ran you off the road only hours ago, and you watch the world through the window with lidded eyes, wondering if you can spot where you hit the ground, if there’s any of your blood mixed in with the gravel. It’s early evening, sun just past the horizon but light lingering in the sky, a dull red mixed in with the sunset. Ronan’s music is turned down to where it can’t actively hurt your ears, and you watch his fingers drum over the wheel in the same tempo, the regularity of the beat making it relaxed rather than restless. It’s almost unsettlingly peaceful, the kind of nice moment that you don’t think you should _have_. You try to sear it all into your mind, something to draw on later when you need a reminder that good things can happen to you, too.  

The illusion of tranquillity lasts another hundred meters, before you notice what’s up ahead. Five cars are parked just off the road, glossy metal predators lying in wait. You don’t recognise four of them but the knife graphic makes the fifth unmistakeable, and you hate yourself for feeling a prickle of fear at the sight of it.

Kavinsky’s gang is gathered between their cars, sitting on hoods or roofs and getting dirty footprints on their windshields. You can tell Ronan’s watching them with the same over-bright attention he always gives Kavinsky, but you think of the grin he gave you right before he rammed into your bike, that sick little knife-smile. He could have killed you. You sink a little lower in your seat.

Ronan slows the car, and you wince internally, choosing to watch Ronan instead of Kavinsky’s pack. It’s not the right choice; he’s so interested in them, so eager, his whole posture changing as he passes, and jealousy runs poisonously through you. Even despite _you_ , Kavinsky can still capture his attention so keenly.

“Lynch,” Kavinsky calls out, and you and Ronan both turn to look at him. His smile’s more of a sneer, and you think with a tremor of dread that Kavinsky must be looking at _you_ through his shades, that the cruel twist of his lips is for you. He still sounds like he’s speaking to Ronan: “After you’ve dropped your girlfriend off, you should come back out here. We’ve got a real nice party planned.”

One of his dogs is still sitting in his car, playing their music for them, and he punctuates Kavinsky’s words by making the engine roar, a low, lazy reverberation that makes your heart stutter with the memory of flying and falling and your body meeting gravel with a painful crunch. Immediately you turn away and duck your head, trying to control your breathing because you’re in a car, because Ronan is right there, because you don’t _know_ that Kavinsky wants to kill you. You just feel it to your core, primeval dread, like you used to get back home.

You shouldn’t look so afraid. You will yourself to stop, but you can’t, Kavinsky is a dangerous animal and one you have no defence against. There’s no restraining order against him, nothing to stop him from coming to find you and knocking you down the stairs, beating the hearing out of your other ear. Nothing to stop him from butchering you and putting an end to whatever it was about you he found so objectionable. You’re too paralyzed to fake bravery, and you curl away from the window, staring bitterly at the dashboard. “Let’s just keep driving,” you tell Ronan, trying not to sound as afraid as you are.

But Ronan’s used to watching you. You realise too late that he has looked at you often enough to notice that you don’t get _this_ scared, that you’ve never flinched away from the sight of Kavinsky before. That your bike looks like it’s been hit by a car. The truth comes to him with a hard clench of his fists, and he tells you, “Stay here,” and gets out of the car before you can stop him.

He stalks towards the parked cars with fury heavy on his shoulders, keen interest in Kavinsky morphing into something much rawer, unmitigated anger clear on his features. You are pitifully afraid of winding down the window in case something incendiary is thrown in, so you can’t hear all of it from the car, but you catch the loudest fragments; “…ram your _fucking_ car into his bike… nothing to do with _this_ … leave him the _fuck_ alone if you want to keep ‘playing’.”

This is your fault, and you hate it. You get out of the car, not really planning to do anything but too humiliated by Ronan picking a fight on your behalf to stay still. You didn’t even get that hurt. You are basically fine, and you would like to move on from your stupid fall and just get home, and _not_ antagonise Kavinsky. Attempts to retaliate always end in you getting hurt worse.

Kavinsky’s gang are just grinning, either too stoned or too stupid to realise that Ronan’s serious, but Kavinsky gets it. You can’t tell if his eyes ever flicker to you, but the grin he continues to give Ronan has a decidedly hard edge to it. He says something to Ronan that you can’t hear.

Ronan slams his fist into Kavinsky’s jaw, hard enough to knock his head back and send his glasses skittering under a car. Kavinsky reels, stumbling back a step, but Ronan’s already stalking back to the BMW, and you don’t know what to do but scramble in after him as he throws himself in front of the wheel and starts the engine. You don’t think there’s anything for you to do; you don’t think this is actually _about_ you, though it doesn’t ease the sting of your involvement. In the wing mirror, you see Kavinsky staring after you, face bare, the deep hollows of his eyes burning. You watch him recede until he’s gone, and you keep an eye on the mirror for a while after, just to be sure.

Ronan drives too fast back to Henrietta, takes all the turns hard enough to slide you across your seat, and you can tell that he’s seething. It’s a rage that he’s avoiding taking out on you, but you’re afraid to say anything, to raise your head and meet his eyes. When people are that mad, you stay quiet; it’s just common sense.

He pulls into the St Agnes parking lot and shuts off the engine. His music dies with it, and the silence rings painfully in your good ear. Outside, night has fallen properly, and the church is dark and empty, your flat emptier than the rest. You can’t think of a single thing to say, but you still don’t want to leave; time in his company is a precious commodity you want to stretch, even if you don’t know how.

You should thank him. You should tell him not to bother. You should tell him you’re not worth it. You should tell him how pleased you are to be worth it.

Ronan breaks the silence, cracking his neck on both sides before finally heaving a sigh. “I’ll handle him.”

You do want to fight your own battles. But you think about the twisted grin, the vicious stare that had followed you so long after you left, and you find a cold spike of real fear driving down your spine. You murmur, “Thanks,” and it shouldn’t be humiliating to need help handling such a volatile device as Kavinsky.

Ronan doesn’t point out that you could have just told him what drove you off the road, and he doesn’t have to inform you that Kavinsky and gang could have been waiting for you to pass them on your way home. That if you’d been walking, you would have been such easy prey for a pack of gleaming hunters. It’s hard to think about, but you’re not Gansey so you think about it anyway, the enemy you’ve made in Joseph Kavinsky. You hope that Ronan knows what he’s doing.

Carefully, like it could be the wrong move and you’re ready to take it back at any second, you lean against Ronan. He leans back, and a second later his arm’s around your shoulders, pulling you tight against him. You’re surprised by the gesture, and further surprised by your own delight, how good it feels to be pressed up against him. There’s something protective about the way he’s holding you, and you want to tell him you don’t need protecting, and you don’t want him to ever move.

“You tell me if Kavinsky gives you any shit,” he tells you after a moment, and you know you should, and you also know that the kind of Adam Parrish that would call Ronan up for help isn’t any kind you’re familiar with.

You say, “I know,” and not ‘I will’ and hope that placates him.

A minute later, and Ronan says, “You should let me drive you until you fix your bike. I’m not going to jam shit under the hood, but I bet Gansey would do it on my behalf and he’ll probably fuck it up and detonate the entire engine.”

You snort, but you’re so tired that the sound almost comes out a sob, and you press the heels of your palms against your eyes to try and ease them. If you fall asleep sitting upright in the BMW then your neck will be absolutely wretched tomorrow. But you can feel the rise and fall of Ronan’s chest against your side, and you can’t imagine yourself intentionally leaving.

You fall asleep despite yourself, just for a second. He flicks you on the nose, a sharp twinge that has you waking annoyed enough to ping him back, and then the moment passes, Ronan pulls his arms back to cross them over his chest and says, “You look like shit, Parrish. Get some sleep.”

It sounds affectionate. The amount of effort actually required to extricate yourself from his car is monumental but you manage it, somehow. “See you tomorrow,” you murmur, and then bass blares to life as he ignites his engine, completely disrespectful of the church’s presence. You watch him peel away, and you tread back up the stairs to your room, remembering belatedly that your bike is still in his trunk, not that it’s good for anything right now.

You wonder if he’ll actually give it back, or if he’ll leave it broken and continue to drive you around. You want to be annoyed by the idea. You _are_ annoyed by the idea. You are also terribly, confusingly hopeful.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/) is 98% shitpost but feel free to come chat to me


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